Meetup’s new cellular app is designed to make it simpler to fulfill individuals IRL

When you’re like me, it is most likely been a sizzling minute because you’ve used and even considered Meetup. Predating each Fb and Twitter, the web site, which was designed to assist individuals set up in-person occasions, has modified fingers a handful of occasions lately.

In 2017, founder Scott Heiferman offered it to WeWork, which offloaded it just a few years later earlier than declaring bankruptcy in 2023. As of 2024, Bending Spoons, the Italian tech firm that is most likely greatest identified for purchasing Evernote in 2022, has been operating Meetup.

Within the aftermath of the pandemic, the platform has seen one thing of resurgence. As of late 2025, Gen Z and younger Millennials make up 40 % of Meetup’s energetic consumer base and characterize its most engaged group of customers. This yr, the app has additionally seen a 20 % year-over-year improve in new registrations. Going into 2026, Bending Spoons is hoping to construct on that momentum with a redesign of Meetup’s cellular app.

The brand new interface, which begins rolling out at the moment, brings the Android and iOS app inline with Meetup’s just lately redesigned web site. Throughout the applying, customers can anticipate up to date fonts, new extra colourful icons and higher spacing. The purpose of the redesign is to make the app “vibrant, enjoyable and extra fashionable than earlier than,” says Chiara Vivaldi, Meetup’s product lead. She provides the redesigned app retains all the important thing options discovered within the earlier model, whereas making these simpler to seek out. For example, customers can entry their profile and teams straight from the homepage of the app.

Past making Meetup really feel extra fashionable, Bending Spoon is utilizing the redesign to cement the groundwork for a collection of enhancements it plans to roll out within the coming months.

In keeping with Vivaldi, one main precedence is to provide individuals, significantly ladies, extra confidence to attend the occasions which might be listed on Meetup. While you navigate to an occasion web page within the new app, you will see a broad gender and age breakdown of the customers who’ve signed as much as be there. Moreover, new and richer consumer profiles enable individuals to get a greater sense of who precisely they could meet in the event that they determine to go. Bending Spoons can also be introducing a brand new Tremendous Organizer badge it plans to award to the platform’s prime occasion planners. It is designed to sign to customers that the one that put collectively the occasion takes group constructing significantly.

Taken collectively, Vivaldi says these options are designed to cut back the friction of attending occasions the place you may not know anybody, and so they’re one thing the corporate plans to construct on sooner or later.

On the identical time, Bending Spoons plans to make it simpler for organizers to make use of Meetup. Beginning early subsequent yr, the corporate will unify Meetup’s two disparate apps — proper now, the corporate maintains separate ones for members and organizers. Vivaldi says organizers can anticipate the unified app to incorporate the entire options they rely on, alongside a handful of enhancements. For example, Vivaldi’s crew is working to make QR-based ticketing the norm for check-ins and attendance monitoring. She says the transfer to a single app is knowledgeable by the truth that 75 % of Meetup’s organizers received their begin as a member.

“[Organizers] are a part of the group. They need to be within the motion, and so having them throughout the identical app is conducive to that. They’ll bounce into conversations, take a look at different occasions, making all of it really feel a bit extra natural,” Vivaldi mentioned. Within the meantime, if it’s been because you’ve used Meetup, you’ll be able to obtain the redesigned app from the App and Google Play shops.